Carriage

It was a good job that I went to get that fire wood yesterday as we now look set for rain over the next few days. Some kind of monkey weather sense guiding me.
I am awaiting delivery of a cheapy Chinese chainsaw that was too much of a bargain to resist. When that comes I will modify my little C girder carriage to accommodate it and cut my remaining planks. This is the carriage attached under the chainsaw in the drawing from December 10th. I had a little stick welder a hand drill and a jigsaw when I made the carriage originally. Slots made by drilling holes and cutting between them with the jig saw. Welds very much hit and miss. I am a lot better equipped now. The only point I was proud of with this quick and nasty solution to my urge to build a chainsaw guide to cut planks was remembering to cut the slots for the little roller wheels at an offset on the angle iron as the overlap would make them out of squiff otherwise.
I wasn't in the least sure that the thing would work, so I made only a small investment of time and even less in money. It was a surprise when even my first attempts at sawing gave fairly straight and true cuts even though the saw looked a bit rickety on the carriage. There seems to be a tendency for the saw to follow the path of least resistance and that is straight along the girder. I used C girder because I had a lot of 12' lengths of it at the time. I guess there are hundreds of other solutions.
All I can say is that they are all probably better than cutting by eye however skilled you are.
I was also thinking of making a guide rail that was curved to cut certain items like some kind of sweeping chaise long, but never tried that.